The electronics industry has experienced an ever increasing demand for smaller and faster electronic devices which are simultaneously able to support a greater number of increasingly complex and sophisticated functions. Accordingly, there is a continuing trend in the semiconductor industry to manufacture low-cost, high-performance, and low-power integrated circuits (ICs). Thus far these goals have been achieved in large part by scaling down semiconductor IC dimensions (e.g., minimum feature size) and thereby improving production efficiency and lowering associated costs. However, such scaling has also introduced increased complexity to the semiconductor manufacturing process. Thus, the realization of continued advances in semiconductor ICs and devices calls for similar advances in semiconductor design, manufacturing processes, and technology.
At least one existing challenge relates to defects formed during the fabrication of semiconductor wafers, IC die, and the devices included thereon. In some existing technologies, an IC die having one or more defects may be discarded, wasting valuable manufacturing and material resources. In some instances, an IC die with one or more defects may be recovered, for example, by blocking off large sections of the IC die that include the one or more defects, which substantially reduces the usable portion of the defective IC die. For the aggressively scaled devices that are currently being manufactured, there is an ever-increasing demand for solutions that address the problem of defective IC die without having to sacrifice valuable manufacturing and material resources, and without having to sacrifice large portions of an IC die.
Accordingly, there is a need for improved systems and methods for providing swappable logic partitions for yield recovery in integrated circuits.